


Gin's Fox Vacation

by DevinePhoenix



Category: Bleach
Genre: Depowered Kurosaki Ichigo, Gen, Post-Aizen Sousuke, Protective Gin, fox!Gin, kitsune!Gin, kitsunegeddon, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 10:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16061162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinePhoenix/pseuds/DevinePhoenix
Summary: Gin decides to enjoy life while he's in hiding and realizes that Ichigo is running on a third of a soul and isn't anywhere close to ok.





	Gin's Fox Vacation

**Author's Note:**

> also titled as 'Gin becomes a guide dog(no really)' or 'Saved by illegally learning to shapeshift'
> 
> Honestly It didn't end how I wanted but it was a good place to end.  
> I'm still getting a handle on writing Gin so be kind. (I think he went a little OOC but eh, let's see)

In hindsight, Gin would like to say he planned it. That he meticulously plotted out every detail of Aizen’s assassination. Poured over scraps of information until he found a weakness to exploit. A perfect moment he could take advantage of, even if he had to wait a hundred years. Planned for every little chance and worse scenario.

 

The reality is this.

 

Aizen is inches away from winning, from becoming the Soul King.

 

And Gin realizes that he’s out of time.

 

In the end,

 

after the entire Gotei tried,

 

he is the last man standing between a madman and the key to the throne.

 

Between one moment and the next, his mind is made up and he _moves_.

 

He is almost unsurprised when he ultimately fails.

 

He spent so much time waiting for his perfect chance. In the end, as he’s sweating, ducked into an alley, Hogyoku held tight in his fist, he knows that he waited too long. Maybe, if he had tried earlier, before Aizen had evolved too much, he would have succeeded. Instead, all his assassination did was drive him to a higher evolution level.

 

He is left, broken and discarded among the rubble like the trash he was born as. The wound Aizen leaves him with is deep and jagged, a fatal blow meant for him to bleed out in a matter of minutes. It hurts like no other injury before ever has but after the initial shock of it, the feeling fades into the background and leaves him numb. The world is slowly slipping away, drop by drop. His Reiatsu burned to nearly nothing as it tried to delay his death.

 

In the depths of his soul, Shinso is quiet and resigned. They had known that there was a high possibility that their story would end like this, but it still grates. Gin feels sorry that his poor Zanpakuto ever ended up with such a suicidal, revenge driven idiot for a wielder. They had been amazing together. But they hadn’t been amazing enough. Aizen had been too strong, ascended beyond the powers of a regular soul.

 

And in the end, Gin had just been a regular soul.

 

Dear Rangiku is leaning over him -he can feel the brush of her hair and the fall of her tears on his face- and she’s saying something through the tears, quiet and desperate that he can barely hear.

 

“-C’mon _change_ just **change** you stubborn fox!” She’s hissing. “Please! Just change!”

 

Oh.

 

**Oh.**

 

_Oh._

 

He is a bit of a ditz isn’t he? Or maybe it’s because of the unhealthy amount of blood he’s lost but he couldn’t believe he forgot.

 

When he had been in the academy, for one boring and harassment filled year, he had had the good fortune to have a surplus of Shihoin related students in his class. They were all very quiet and very disciplined, eyes sharp and always watchful. Fitting of future assassins.

 

Now in another life, maybe one of the Shihoin wards fell sick, resulting in that’s year’s group being small enough to be taught within the compound and none of the wards would go to the academy.

 

That was not the case. And with some pureblood Shihoin being educated outside the clan grounds, their tutor would need to come to them. They would get extra Onmistu training, how to suppress their reiatsu and move silently and most importantly, shapeshift into an animal. They would seal off a gym every Tuesday and Thursday so that they could teach the secret clan technique away from prying eyes. Naturally, Gin would eavesdrop. It was a little tricky, using the suppression skills he had overhead before and hiding in the high rafters, but he managed to slip beneath the notice of the tutors.

 

It took him much longer than he expected, after all other Shinigami arts came so easily to him. The technique was difficult to grasp for the Shihoin as well, though the skill was taught, the only one who managed a transformation in the end was a small boy who resembled the legendary goddess of flash too much to be anything other than a main family member.

 

The transformation came slow and stuttering as he progressed, a patch of silver fur sprouting on his arm, sharp fangs struggling to fit in his human jaw, nails too long and shar and hard to be anything other than claws, ears becoming pointed and then finally sprouting a long bushy tail. His practices were fraught with danger, there was always the chance that he wouldn’t be able to turn back the body part in time. There was always the change he would be caught and ‘vanished’ by the Shihoin or worse. They could consign him to the creepy twelfth to study why his shift was so different. More than likely, being forcibly recruited was a real possibility. He’d be shipped off and never heard of again as he was stuck in modern-day slavery, working long hours in a grueling assassin’s job with a high death rate and zero chance of retirement.

 

In the end he finally made the full shift and realized part of the problem behind why the shift had been so difficult. It turned out that half the problem was that his spirit refused to take the shape of the classic Shihoin feline and instead preferred the shape of a pure white fox.

 

It was such a convenient form; the transformation was meant to act as a pseudo-gigai as it compressed the spiritual pressure and as a result, made you visible to humans. It was the oldest and crudest form of the gigai technique. The heavy reiatsu compression made him appear to only have the reiatsu of an animal, letting him slip underneath Aizen’s senses and traps.

 

His wounds were grave, but if he changed form they would be less so, compressed into something less deep. He would be able to naturally recover from there. Even gasping for breath and half dead, the transformation came as easy as a gentle breeze.

 

One minute he was a bloodied human and the next he was a small pure white fox lying tangled in a pile of clothes. Hopefully, Rangiku would be able to pass the clothes and lack of a body off on the godly amounts of reiatsu being thrown around. A reiatsu-less corpse could easily dissolve under the pressure and collateral damage they were throwing around.

 

Rangiku knew about the form because he used to visit her in the form of a fox so that Aizen would not make any inconvenient assumptions about his attachment to her.

 

“ _Gin._ Did it work? Are you ok?” Rangiku asked, gently peeling the soiled clothes off him. “Do I need to take you somewhere to hide?”

 

He hazily detangled himself and stepped easily into the accepting warmth of her arms. God did he love her, even with a betrayal hanging between them she knew exactly what he would want.

  

* * *

 

 

The real Karakura was much louder than he expected. Both in sound and colour. Like any other Captain, he had rarely been allowed in the modern living world for fear of warping souls with the force of his reiatsu. The few times he had, it was mainly to fight powerful hollows, and that was not a good time for sightseeing.

 

Now that he could linger, he found that he rather liked it.

 

The buildings were brightly coloured, far different from the plain white of Seireitei or Las Noches. Soft music played in shopping areas and loud cars honked and revved on the roads. The world was so vibrant and fascinating, and he felt as though he had lost a massive weight on his shoulders.

 

Even Rangiku’s warning about staying low before she disappeared back to Soul society couldn’t dampen his spirits. (She’d lie for him and keep him safe, he knew)

 

He was bright eyed, and bushy tailed and ready to explore the world.

 

Life was easy and lazy. He spent his night sleeping in a shrine and spent the days investigating the world. To his delight, if he acted particularly friendly, living souls would leave food for him. He had never been so well fed in his life.

 

_There was even a small grove of persimmon trees growing in someone’s backyard!!_

 

He was not ashamed to admit that he basically whored himself out for pats to get some of that old lady’s fruits.

 

It took him nearly a month to notice Ichigo.

 

To be fair, without his overbearing reiatsu leaking everywhere he was a very quiet person. Unobtrusive and easily lost in a crowd despite his vibrant orange hair, he blended into the regular populace like a ghost. He thought the first few glimpses were a mistake on his part, dismissing the few snatches of bright hair among the black-haired crowd as those of the bleached ‘delinquents’ he ran into a few days ago.

 

Gin almost thought he was mistaken yet again when he finally spotted a head or orange tucked up underneath a riverside bridge. He was curled in on himself and staring blankly at the water. He was muted somehow, the vibrancy of his spirit dulled and half gone. Ichigo’s gaze was flat and lifeless, lacking the grim steadiness he had trusted his revenge to when he had been dying on the ground.

 

Now that he noticed him, it was almost impossible for him not to see him anymore. Walking to school, drifting home, going to stores, he was completely alone. From what he could observe with his new ‘strawberry’ watching hobby, his friends didn’t interact with him anymore, more concerned with keep Karakura’s booming hollow population down than keeping company with a boy who was missing two thirds of his soul.

(And boy was that a shock to overhear)

Were the rest of them stupid? Anyone else would be in a coma from that level of damage but the fact that he was walking around didn’t mean that the kid was alright. The only one who appeared to stick around was the quincy kid who seemed to realize something was off. He seemed to have some empathy for his situation, but he never stepped in drastically to help either. Quietly fretting from a distance in his arrogant way.

 

Gin couldn’t quite understand the avoidance, he could understand if there was some ploy in play, he himself had avoided Rangiku as much was polite while his Aizen schemes were going on. He hadn’t wanted to get her involved and marked with the same target. The children just appeared to be overly busy, accidentally neglecting their friend.

 

He never let go of the people that were his and it was baffling for someone to just let such a gem as Kurosaki slip out of their grasp. Hadn’t he proven his extreme loyalty by going up against a near-god for his friends? Why weren’t they returning that fanatic loyalty? He really couldn’t understand people sometimes. That kind of devotion was something he valued highly since he possessed it himself and was aware how far he would go for his precious people. People who shared that trait were not to be taken lightly and were to be won over at all costs.

 

The first few weeks after he noticed him, Ichigo was vacant and unsteady, having trouble grasping his surroundings. After watched him nearly absentmindedly walk into traffic for the fourth time that week, Gin decided that it wouldn’t do for the guy who took down The Bastard to die from something as mundane as a car. That would just leave a bad taste in his mouth, especially if he could do something about it

 

So he decided to do something about it.

 

It wasn’t as though Ichigo, disconnected from reality as he was right now, could recognize him and turn him in anyway.

 

It was almost too easy to just slip under his hand and nose him along. Ichigo didn’t even react much beyond distractedly patting his head. He became a fluffy little guardian angel, tugging Ichigo and guiding him in his hazy state whenever he left the house. To be fair, Ichigo rarely left his house, all Gin had to do was escort him to and from school. And one time up a big long hill where he crumpled before a grave and refused to move for the day despite his urgent prodding. In the end he had had to fetch a water bottle and snacks from a vending machine to make sure the idiot didn’t die of dehydration.

 

(Don’t ask how a fox managed to use a vending machine, it was a long frustrating process.)

 

(He was never going to take thumbs for granted again)

 

Despite his obvious fox features, Karakura collectively decided he was too big to be a fox and must therefore be some strange breed of dog. By the time Ichigo’s awareness started to filter back in any capacity, Gin had become a well-known fixture at his side despite his efforts to remain unseen.

 

Yuzu had lured him in the house the week before, with truly excellent kitsune udon. He had glumly accepted the collar she offered him in hopes it would get the pound off his back. He could trick and outwit them easily of course, but the constant harassment was just annoying. The pampering was very fun though, he got his first thorough bath in a while and a steady supply of excellent food.

 

A few days after his humiliating induction as the Kurosaki pet, Ichigo started to respond more, ruffling his sister’s hair and giving one-word answers. Then wandering Karakura with increasing purpose.

 

Finally, he came to rest at that familiar place at the riverside. Gin could feel the moment his awareness came back in full, his stroking hands turned into a desperate grip as he leaned forward with a sob. Gin licked the tears away as the ex-substitute Shinigami sobbed out his loss.

 

“Ichigo.” He said, quiet and gentle in a tone previous reserved for Rangiku and Izuru.

 

“Gin.” He replied, just as quiet as he smooshed the silver fox’s face between his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaaaaah  
> this ficlet was all based around the idea of Gin wandering around as a fox and running into sad and powerless Ichigo. Him teaching Ichigo how to shapeshift too, even with basically no reiatsu since its more about control of yourself and your reiatsu than about how much you have. And the two foxes deciding to go on a happy foxy worldwide trip to see stuff and not deal with people.
> 
> As you can see, literally none of that ended up in here since I went 'backstory!!!:D!!!'


End file.
